Aftermath
by Moonix
Summary: Short piece set after DH. Hermione returns home with Ron after a year of madness.


**Aftermath**

1.

The tea cup in Mrs Granger's hands is made of fine bone china. The saucer is chipped in one place and dainty pink flowers curl up the side of the cup. As she guides it to her mouth, a slight tremor runs through her hand, and she sets it down again, unsure for a moment whether she has already drunk from it or not.

Hermione steps into the room. Her daughter Hermione. She knows that now, repeats the words over and over to herself, even at night, in bed, until she can't hold her eyes open anymore. Hermione, her daughter. Her daughter, Hermione.

Mrs Granger remembers the day her daughter was born. An entirely ordinary, if slightly windy 19th of September. She can see the clear blue eyes of the nurse leaning down to check on her. She can feel the chill of a hospital gown on her skin and she shivers. There are many things she can remember. But sometimes the memories are still void of the cries of a newborn baby girl.

"Mum?"

Hermione's voice pulls her back to the present. She sets down her tea cup once again, running her tongue over the roof of her mouth in search of the bitter taste. Gently, Hermione places a small, flowery plate in front of her. On the plate sits a slightly misshapen slice of cake. The bottom has been scraped off carefully to remove the burnt parts. How she knows this, she can't quite say.

"Ron and I made it," Hermione is saying.

Mrs Granger blinks at the tall, red-haired young man that stands in the doorway, fidgeting. She smiles at him. She can recognize him by now, her memory is getting better every day, they tell her. But still his name tends to slip from her grasp.

Her mind is like a big, black river. She spends her days and nights hauling forgotten things from its depths. Sunshine and memories twirl and float on the surface, and sometimes they are pulled under again by a sudden, unexpected undertow, only to resurface again at some distant point.

"That's lovely, darling," she hears herself say.

The cake is a little gritty and still tastes burnt. Mrs Granger only smiles and eats her whole slice until there are only crumbs left on the plate, and then she uses her fingers to pick up those, gobbling up every bit of the cake her daughter and the nice young man have made for her.

2.

Rain is sloshing against the windowpanes of the house. Everything inside is very clean, every room very tidy. Ron has a hard time getting used to this place: the silence, the slowness of time, the way there is a place for every single item and how, no matter how many times he puts down a book on a table and forgets about it, it always appears back in the same spot on the large shelf.

Hermione's home is so different from the Burrow that he doesn't quite know whether to be annoyed or glad that he is here, with her, instead of with his family. The loss of his brother is still fresh and raw in his mind, but he is also aware that Hermione still has the chance of getting back her parents, and besides, she needs him now.

As he has done so many times over the past week, he pads over to Hermione's dresser to look at the photographs. All ordinary, run-of-the-mill framed pictures of an ordinary baby, an ordinary school child, and ordinary young girl. And yet he knows that the girl is extraordinary.

Being in her house sometimes upsets him. Apart from making him feel alienated and useless whenever he watches her talking to her parents, trying to get every last scrap of memory back, he is also for the first time painfully aware of what it means to be an extraordinary child born to ordinary parents.

One afternoon, he opens the wardrobe in her room in search for a scarf against the rain and the wind. Here, safely tucked away, he discovers forgotten things: school books, awards for science projects and outstanding essays, a small and tattered school bag with ink stains containing dried-out pens and bits of paper. A yearbook with a blurry, unmoving photograph of a smiling, gap-toothed girl with hope in her eyes and no written messages or farewells from classmates. Only one neat and tiny note at the bottom of the page: _Dear Hermione, all the best for your bright future from your teacher, Alice Graham._

It tugs at his heartstrings. He puts everything back carefully, closes the door and leaves the house to buy bread and milk without a scarf. Cold wind whips his face and raindrops slide down the back of his neck like the fingers of the dead, like the swish of an old, ragged curtain fluttering slightly in a room full of stagnant air.

3.

She calls out to Harry in her sleep.

Her most vivid memories, perhaps, are of the endless moments when she thought that Harry Potter was actually, irrevocably, completely dead. Fighting for a better world is one thing, she thinks, but in the end, what will stick with you is this: losing a friend. And another. And another.

And another.

When she dreams, and Harry lies still and dead on the ground in front of her, she calls out to him to stop him somehow - because even more than Harry getting killed, she used to fear that Harry would sooner or later somehow convince himself that he had to die, that he had to sacrifice himself. That she would have to watch him walk to his own death.

When she wakes, drenched in sweat, feeling blindly for Ron's heartbeat beside her, she is actually glad that Harry spared them both the sight.

Back in this quiet house after a year of madness, she can only hope to put back the pieces, one after another. Coaxing new memories out of her parents every day. Sleeping in the tiny bed at night with Ron curled into her, letting her clutch his hand between hers until she falls asleep, so she won't wake up to find him gone. Again. And again.

And again.

The memories besiege her, all grappling for attention in her head. It's odd, she thinks, how she tries so hard in the mornings to clear the fog in her parents' minds, while she herself would rather forget. But she can't. And she mustn't.

Life will go on, and she will go with it.


End file.
